I sent 13 bitcoins from my wallet to a store for payment. I sent the coins back on the 16th, but the transaction has not processed and the transaction is not in the chain. The store never received the bitcoins I sent them. I double checked the address to ensure I did not send them elsewhere.

I read that if the transaction is not completed in 24 hours the bitcoins are returned to my wallet. I had 16 bitcoins in my wallet on the 16th before I sent the 13. I now have 3 coins in my wallet. Are the other 13 gone for good? Are they in bitcoin limbo? If they are gone what caused the problem to happen?

The block chain is the main innovation of Bitcoin. It is the
first distributed timestamping system.

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I had 16 bitcoins in my wallet on the 16th before I sent the 13. I now have 3 coins in my wallet. Are the other 13 gone for good? Are they in bitcoin limbo? If they are gone what caused the problem to happen?

There could be a couple things happening. Know that bitcoin doesn't lose funds. Either they are spent or they are still available to you for spending (presuming you still have access to the wallet).

So possibly the transaction is not being relayed. Is this wallet.dat possibly from a backup and the coins chosen for the transaction were already spent?

Ya, that was assuming you were using the bitcoin.org client. With mutlibit, I'm going to have to defer to someone knowledgeable with that client. The Multibit thred would be the best place to ask. Are you still stuck in newbie jail or can you post there?

Ya, that was assuming you were using the bitcoin.org client. With mutlibit, I'm going to have to defer to someone knowledgeable with that client. The Multibit thred would be the best place to ask. Are you still stuck in newbie jail or can you post there?

MultiBit allows easy export of the keys, so worst case you should be able to import them elsewhere and do the transaction there.